The St. Peter Parish Council is comprised of parishioners from various experiences and backgrounds who consider and propose recommendations to our Pastor, Father Gregory, concerning the pastoral work of our parish. Father Gregory selects and appoints the members of the Parish Council, which meets, on the average, once a month. The Council interfaces with staff and volunteers regarding various topics that effect our parish. Currently, the Parish Council is focusing on four specific areas of importance within the Parish Council’s Strategic Plan: Education, Communications, Liturgy and Youth Engagement. (July 2019)

My name is Ed Paulovich and I am the vice president of the St. Peter Parish Council. My wife Shelly and I have been parishioners at St. Peter for 14 years. We have two children and four grandchildren.

The parish council consists of six parish members who have various life, business and vocational experiences. They are J.J. Kaelin-President, Trish Eells-Secretary, Terry Nickel, Paul Zmuda and Bruce Bishop.

The purpose of this article is to inform parishioners about the existence and the duties of the parish council, and to provide an update concerning the tasks Father Gregory has asked us to focus on this coming year. Our main purpose is to aid the pastor by advising and assisting him in the pastoral care of the parish and to foster pastoral activities. Father’s first task for the council this year was to review, revise and suggest changes to the current mission statement and five-year plan and to make both documents staff and parishioner friendly. Therefore, we developed a new Mission Statement:

“St. Peter Parish is a welcoming community of different backgrounds living the joy of Catholic Faith in the Diocese of Colorado Springs.”

After reviewing the five-year plan we found that we had accomplished the listed goals and now needed to develop a new five-year strategic plan. We identified threeareas of concentration: Communication, Liturgy and Education and goals were developed in each area.Communication -To establish a proactive “central communication system” of consistent, integrated messaging outreach.Liturgy - To retain and grow our faith community through a vibrant, joyful, consistent Catholic Mass and special services experience.Education -To provide engaging, relevant and dynamic Catholic children’s and youth faith formation and adult continuing faith educational opportunities.

We worked with parish/school staff assigned to each area to develop a five-year strategic work plan. The strategic work plan includes goals, activities, person/persons responsible for completion of goal, evaluation criteria, resources needed to accomplish the goal and start/finish dates.

In next month’s article, I will address the strategic work plan for communication.